


over hill and under tree

by banh_bao



Category: Ace Mansion (Roleplay)
Genre: AMiversary Day 5, Betaed, Gen, shoutout to my friend xyskal for beta reading this at 1:30 am, ur a real one bro
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-23
Updated: 2020-08-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 02:14:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 472
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26059303
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/banh_bao/pseuds/banh_bao
Summary: Twice born of human hands, human sweat and blood and tears (mostly blood, mostly sweat), it knows the thankless chore of work that must be done.Or: bunker introspection because who doesn't have a soft spot for ambiguously sentient liminal spaces?
Kudos: 2





	over hill and under tree

It is quiet and it is old, this place beneath the soil. Over time it has become something of itself– detached, perhaps, from the greater whole of the Mansion. It sees. It knows.

Twice born of human hands, human sweat and blood and tears (mostly blood, mostly sweat), it knows the thankless chore of work that must be done. At once it is (and was) shelter and prison, an empty oasis of quiet in the desert storm of Mansion life. A little out of the way, perhaps; rather inconvenient for any but the paranoid and desperate.

Its existence can be separated into three sections: the Before, the Nothing, and the After. The Before consisted of its creation, the mutterings of its sole inhabitant, and their gradual but steady decline. Then came a long silence: years, decades, centuries until at last new bodies stepped foot in its earthen walls. With them came a sleepy sort of half-awareness, like waking up from a deep slumber in the dead of night.

Then a flurry of noise and activity. A flash of heat, light, sound, pain–

and then the Nothing.

The Nothing is, as it sounds, a period of unawareness. It is not fully unmade, but it is damaged and sleeping once more; the time that passes goes unregistered and any activity from the world above or below slips fully beyond its grasp. No memories are made, no dreams are had. Just darkness.

It's a funny thing, this Nothing. In its duration there is little to be observed; where there once was, now there is not. Consideration after the fact, however, is infinitely more interesting. What stories did it miss, those few days (weeks, months, who knows how long in this place that never turns, no sun or core or orbital path, where concept of time itself is a transient dream) of darkness? Even the centuries of silence in the Before, though dull with monotony, had something to their name. This, though, is a true hole in the fabric of unrecorded memory.

Enough of that. Next comes the After.

The beginning of the After may be one of its happiest memories. Many hands, many feet, all laboring as one to clear its cramped chambers. Things are added; comforting things, so that its inhabitant(s!) may live instead of just survive; all those warm and honey sweet goods that make a house into a home. 

But the bustle of activity is short-lived. Slowly the number of residents dwindles to a single guest yet to fully claim it as her own. Its many beds lie empty and unused, its cushions and tables gathering dust instead of guests. Only time will tell whether late-night conversations between friends and not-quite-friends will return to the rooms.

That's alright. The bunker can wait. It has a great deal of experience doing that.

**Author's Note:**

> yeah i wrote like 400 words of pretentious bunker introspection. what the FUCK are you gonna do about it


End file.
